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Table of Contents
Recommendation 4.1
Recommendation to Organizations to support IGSN deployment
Description
Status: Draft 22.5.2025
Motivation for this Recommendation:
Registering IGSNs benefits organizations by ensuring that physical samples are uniquely identifiable, traceable, and citable, which improves data quality, provenance, and reproducibility. It supports FAIR data practices by linking samples to related datasets, publications, and instruments, enhancing visibility and reuse. Organizations also gain better oversight of sample use and impact, which supports collaboration, reporting, and compliance—ultimately strengthening their role as trusted stewards of research data.
Recommendation
It is recommended, that organizations [Note: in the similar ORCID the recomenndation goes to the center management. This should be addressed in a uniform manner] should:
1. provide a way to allow personnel to register IGSNs by either signing up with DataCite or partner with an organization or service, which allows registration of IGSNs.
2. assign a person or unit within their organization, who is responsible to maintain and curate the centres IGSNs. These could e.g. be members of a local data management team or sample curators.
Binding Convention:
| mandatory | conditional | optional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helmholtz FAIR Principle |
Precondition for Implementation:
Personnel trained on the use and registration of IGSNs must exist in the organization.
Related Recommendations
Parent: 4.0
Dependent: none
Other: none
Contributors
Manu
Content
1. Explanation of the Background and Benefits of the Recommendation
About
History and structure
Current Use of …
Motivation
Registering IGSNs benefits organizations by ensuring that physical samples are uniquely identifiable, traceable, and citable, which improves data quality, provenance, and reproducibility. It supports FAIR data practices by linking samples to related datasets, publications, and instruments, enhancing visibility and reuse. Organizations also gain better oversight of sample use and impact, which supports collaboration, reporting, and compliance—ultimately strengthening their role as trusted stewards of research data.
2. Possible alternative solutions
Organizations may recommend other solutions, e.g. those discussed in the recommendation to use IGSN alternative solutions chapter.
3. Consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of implementing the recommendation
The advantag is, that this recommendation allows for a clear responsibility for these tasks within the organization. this will allow people to follow the recommendations, improve the chance that IGSNs are actually assigned and thus improve the reliability and trust into the organization's data products.
There are no anticipated disadvantages.
4. The Recommendation
It is recommended, that organizations [Note: in the similar ORCID the recomenndation goes to the center management. This should be addressed in a uniform manner] should:
1. provide a way to allow personnel to register IGSNs by either signing up with DataCite or partner with an organization or service, which allows registration of IGSNs.
2. assign a person or unit within their organization, who is responsible to maintain and curate the centres IGSNs. These could e.g. be members of a local data management team or sample curators.